A Westfield toddler who was tethered to a mechanical heart pump received a donor heart earlier in September. Two-year-old Santi Banda is recovering from transplant surgery in Cincinnati, Ohio.
Santi's ordeal began when a severe respiratory syncytial virus infection triggered heart failure, causing severe organ damage before he was placed on a Berlin Heart device, according to Fox 59. Doctors believe a virus or infection may have contributed to his heart failure, the station reports.
A False Start in August
The family thought the wait was over in August, when a donor heart became available for Santi. But doctors determined that heart could not be used, and Santi and his family were sent back into the waiting process, per the same account. Dr. Clifford Chin, a pediatric cardiologist and medical director of Cincinnati Children's Hospital's heart transplant program, described what that meant for Santi day to day: his life was essentially stuck in the hospital.
Surgeons can begin parts of the operation before the donor heart arrives.
Doing Well After Surgery
Chin said Santi is doing well as he recovers from the operation and is entering a new chapter now that the transplant has happened.
A heart transplant marks a new chapter in Santi's medical story.
How Far Pediatric Heart Support Has Come
The ACTION network conducted a post-approval surveillance study of the Berlin Heart EXCOR.
Long Waits, Improving Odds
The pediatric allocation system includes a Status 1A category. For Status 1A candidates, matching takes time: research published in PMC found that candidates weighing 25 kilograms or less with blood type O face a median wait of 108 days, compared with 24 days for candidates weighing over 25 kilograms with non-O blood type.
A separate Stanford Medicine-led study in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology found overall pediatric waitlist mortality fell from 21 percent to 13 percent over two decades, though researchers attributed the gains to advances in medical care rather than changes to organ allocation rules.
Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center, where Santi received his care, reported a 93.1 percent one-year survival rate for pediatric heart transplant recipients under 18 between 2022 and 2024, exceeding the national benchmark, according to Cincinnati Children's Hospital.
